Sacrifice: It's what dads do

A truth about fathers is that few people acknowledge the hardest thing they do. And they never complain because they take if for granted themselves.

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Posted Jun. 15, 2013 @ 12:01 am

A truth about fathers is that few people acknowledge the hardest thing they do.

And they never complain because they take if for granted themselves.

Maybe in this column I can change that.

Soon, my own dad will be 88.

I should first say there are many things about him I don’t take for granted: Mostly his personal side.

I’ve told him countless times I love him, and am amused by him — how could you not be?

He’s one of those fathers.

More than a few times, waitresses would survey all us sons and say to my folks, “So you tried five times and got five boys.” To which my dad would say, “Yep. And we tried thousands of times and got nothing.”

He’s a retired businessman from Chicago who bought a weekend farm and built up a beef operation, and if you met him today, he’d put his card in your hand and tell you to call if you need bull.

He’d tell you plenty more because two things I’ve never heard in the same sentence are “Hal Patinkin” and “shy.”

Spend an hour with him and you’ll hear he was captain of the William Rainey Harper High School tennis team. And after college, when his girlfriend June moved to Paris for an adventure, he followed her there to talk her into marrying him, almost changing his mind because she’d cut her hair short. But 63 years later, it’s worked out fine. And he’ll definitely tell you he has 16 grandchildren, and the best-looking ones look like him.

As I said, he’s gifted at rolling out lines that amuse the room.

Such as:

“I’ve seen a lot of changes in my 88 years, and I’ve been against every one of them.”

And: “There’s no one as remarkable as your mother — only woman I’ve ever loved; what’s her name again?”

He gets plenty of attention for that, as well as his now legendary … practices.

Like sneaking cigars by hiding them in his car’s seatback pockets, then saying he needs to go on errands. Alone.

Like eating cheeseburgers for lunch and ribs for dinner because, as he explains, “You gotta die of something.”

If you visit the farm, he’ll bounce you through gullies in his pickup while you hold on with white knuckles.

Then he’ll walk around the house with a box of frozen Milky Way bars forcing them into your hands.

There’s also the way he dresses, wearing string-ties to nice events. That is, when our mom can get him to go, because why would you leave the house when “Goodbye Mr. Chips” is on, which, my boy, was made in 1939 when movies were still movies.

And for the longest time, he bought his wife as many birthday presents as her age, holding court in a department store chair while thrilled salesladies added to the pile.

Most fathers have things like that — personal stories and customs their families applaud them for.

And yet.

There’s this other thing fathers do that few acknowledge because dads are just … supposed to. So they do it. And never ask for attention. Or credit.

Before I say what it is, let me begin with a story about my own dad.

When I was a kid, I’d sometimes go to the attic to rummage through boxes for artifacts. At one point, I came across my dad’s old Charles Atlas exercise pamphlets — which he still talks about today, even striking muscle poses to show the results. There were many amusing items.

And then I found this other thing. It was a manuscript of an unpublished book my dad wrote. It was about Hannibal and I still remember the lively writing — an opening phrase about the shadows of a campfire flickering on a cave wall. He wrote it while an assistant history teacher after college.

Back then, he thought he might do that for a living — teach. Or write. He thought about acting, too — no surprise given his love of center-stage.

But in his mind-20s, his own father said he was needed in the family scrap-metal business. So, without complaint, my dad gave up his more creative dreams to become a businessman.

There’s a chance he might have done it in time anyway because he and my mom had five sons. That’s a lot of groceries to buy.

And, I should add, he did pursue his engaging, creative side. He emceed events like his college reunions — and still today moderates public affairs forums held in the Florida community where he and my mother spend winters. He once managed the campaign of a U.S. congressman. He coached Little League and became president of the league. He’d grow cowboy beards when he and my mom took us on cross-country station-wagon adventures.

But all along, almost every weekday for 45 years, he did something else.

He went to the office.

Early on, he didn’t call it that, and we didn’t, either. It was “the plant” — the family business; where he helped oversee scrap metal and waste-paper processing. It was a scruffy building that to me symbolized work. It didn’t look like fun, but fathers everywhere, it seemed, went to such buildings to make a living.

In time, he went to work for another industrial firm that made aluminum ingots. He was in sales. It wasn’t acting, writing or college teaching. It was business. And a lot of it was stressful, especially when he moved on yet again with a metals trading firm, where performance depended on gauging the markets correctly.

A few times, he got involved in side-ventures to help pay bills, like buying and overseeing some dry-cleaning stores. None of that, he tells me with a smile, worked out too well, which is why he always advises me to stick to my day job.

As he stuck to his. Every day for 45 years.

And something occurs to me on this Father’s Day about that. And him. And most fathers.

He got plenty of attention for the family things he did — from big pursuits like creating a weekend farm to small things like handing out Milky Ways.

But he got little applause for his work.

Or the dreams he put aside so he could provide for us.

He just did it because he was supposed to.

Without asking for credit.

Which is what most dads do.

If it’s not too late, I want to tell him, and all fathers, how much it means that you gave that to those who needed you.